Unidentified Flying Hedgehog
by The Sky Hedgehogian Maestro
Summary: You might as well slapped a stamp on them and mailed 'em to Mars. You may need to be stoned to properly understand.
1. Uno De Estos Sui Generis Dias

_::Onwards we ride right into the dragon's needle eye inside the vicious dreamland black hole in where else but good old UFOrlando?::_

:: Miles Prower is my name. ::  
This is Tails.

[SBDRF Chronicles]  
~The Sky Hedgehogian Maestro presents...  
**{unidentified flying hedgehog}**

[Friday]  
[Week One]  
[7:10 PM]  
[Station Square]

::All my friends are dead. They always said that I'd be a great hero someday, and now that they're gone, I have that chance. 'You've done well, my friend,' they would say if they were still alive.  
Or if they ever existed.::  
Tails's cheek smooshes on the head of the sill as he, eyes flooded with twenty gallons of ennui, stares back at the shrinking city. So long, Station Square. So long, Emerald Coast. So long, Casinopolis. So long, you nostalgia ridden bores. Minatown came before- in fact, he had a tally of fun with a quadcopter over the financial district, and it was that toy's falling into his hand that kickstarted all this. Just one last stop at Amy's home was all that separated today and the summer. Nothing, no squees, no smileys, nothing of the sort. Just a picking up op. Amy came on with a duffle, or is that two. Both tug the petite pink hedgehog down, and letting them dent the floor results in a gladdened sigh from Amy's mouth and muscles. She eyes Sonic like a tiger to a gazelle, knowing well that the crutch-ridden wreck of a hog has no chance to escape.  
::Sliding æchatio the head of a newspaper-"15 Aerials Removed In W. Pat City" before this too moves on to "Discus Event Ends With Player Disqualified."The news didn't care for us and we cared nothing for it. That's how wrong we were. And viddy this one- "Officials Say Minatown UFO Is **'Definite Hoax**'." It landed in my rooker, so I never thought it was the real thing.::  
Not that there is anything wrong with this glassy picture, but one cannot help but to feel as if everything feels altered- if that's the right expression. It's a singularity of events. Somewhere along the line from leaving Minatown to arriving at Station Square- and from there to UFOrlando- effects lost cause, and causes forgot to have effects. And Station Square itself whispered their future right into their ears. The fridge buzzing of the city, the dial tone of the streets, the white noise-filled entrances to the highways, all these things worked like a broken TV to add to whatever stupidity came before may have set up and left scraps for the consequences to gnaw on. And it was this gnawing that bothers Tails now.  
Another bother was that someone had tossed a saucer plate, striking Tails in his face and knocking over the fox's house of cards.  
:Rickies tipped their canes and the trabs raised their sickles. Devotchkas and chavis lined the streets for a piece of our chaffi. It's Junio's buggin', and we wanted to filly on. Most of us. Shadow delivered Sonic a bit of his old 'manna-durra'- funny is as it was::  
"¿So, Shads, where ya' takin' us first? " And there goes Sonic, naming destinations as fast as he runs. Shadow scowls before back-handing him across his forehead, and then he returns to adjusting the GPS. "God. ***DAMN***" is what he needed to say. "Aw sweet. Nice path, Sha-" Sonic might wake up someday. The wall dent's size and the scope of his injuries are not encouraging. Shadow ruffles his shoulder fur, letting his mind consider dumping a few litres of hand sanitizer on the cap just to be safe. Fifty pounds of hedgehog comes through the door. Sonic hits the bed and counts his wounds.  
::Fluid ounce, two fluid ounces of coffee was all we had to stay awake all night, and everyone knows I don't peet the stuff. Sonic doesn't need it, Shadow never tried it, and I know Knuckles hates it. That left Amy, Cream, and Silver- and I was less than sure about some of them. So then we left, we go, oh god, how many hours will we stay? Onwards we ride right into the dragon's needle eye inside the vicious dreamland black hole in where else but good old UFOrlando?::  
With less food to feed a mouse, the general mood of the camp is thriftin'. No one now is crippled by hunger, but by end-of-day melancholia. Listen closely. ¿Do you hear it? The mute screams of boredom.  
But it's evening and Tails is losing it.  
:: It was my nocturnal madness, always raring to find a shadow dance in the corner of my eye, or a point of light waltz so chaotically above as, back and forth, bloody fingers sprint across the dying day's sky. The living light is evanescent and what remains of the once pervasive sunshine is sullen and defeated. For the love of this great God, don't ask me- I don't remember when I started reminiscing my thoughts in purple prose. ::

[**Uno De Estos Sui Generis Dias**]

~oOoOo~  
[Friday]  
[Week One]  
[7:45 PM]  
The camp begins their trek.

It rains while the sun shines. Tails looks for something to read.

::Rain came down as necrokinetic amorphous bullets striking the roof, the windshield, in droves. Take a glance out the window, and see a paradox. The crying hand of a cloud hangs over our camp while the weak fuchsia sun rippled on the horizon. My hands scoured the library for something to read. Mirrors are more fun than television, and books more fantastic than mirrors.  
"_Von Mars_, M. Womack. Huh." I sighed back a yawn and let my neurons choose this one. Two weird names, heralding something of a bit of foreshadowing of the future. Tired polygons of funeral mahogany sunlight slithered across the floors and walls just as they hit another one of my reads, the _Bhagavad Gita_. Thoughts struck me for that one as well- on its own, an interesting text. On the other hand, could that 'sun'light have been directed so that I may be distracted long enough to notice this book?  
I could have sworn there was a flash but I wrote it off as nothing more than the ghost of a lightning bolt divorced from any semblance of thunder. ::

A beam of sunlight strikes a book. Tails grabs a different book.

"Yo, Tails..." :: I heard his crutches 'clack' on the floor and figured he- oh, there's a hot water bag on his forehead. He called Knuckles a 'backwards waste of bloated space'. It is that or Shadow's manna-durra was more devastating than expected. :: "¡Wanna play a round?"  
"Mmmaybe later." :: He grinned at me like I was his pet but follied by stumbling on his left crutch. It thumped on the floor, and his hand is what kept him standing. ::  
"Don'tcha worry. I'll prolly be winning all night, so take your time, brohan." He crouches and grabs his crutch and limps to the other room. Tails averts his eyes back to the book and stays with it for a bit. Listen here, the wave of cheers has crested, but it was quite the wave. But you can also hear a groan.  
"¡Wow, hon!" ::I heard Rouge's words smack across Sonic's cheek.:: "You had a _catastrophic_ hedge-hand."  
"Aw, shut yer boke."  
:: So that's how pride dies. With friendly laughter. :: Tails cracks a smile as Sonic's words repeat in his head. _'I'll prolly be winning all night, so take your time, brohan.'_

::Two fingers press against a switch and lightlessness suddenly suffuses throughout the room. As quickly as darkness won, a table is brilliant with light, and the cone of a shade throws its amber light straight downward, letting some mahogany pollution scamper off into the corners and crevices of the room. Shut your ears and succumb to the numbing grip of these sexy lines of prose.::

He turns on the light and opens the book.

* * *

**VON MARS**

* * *

[ACER]

[New Life- New World™]

* * *

_To you, Miri_

Chapter One  
Auld Lang Syne

Greetings. Janvier/Halcyon© is glad that you have chosen us to proxy your neural reboot. Please remain in stasis while Terra-Sapius 3 redeems your expired LifeKard. If you so desire, you may interact with various post-virtual life forms while we re-examine your karmaEval.

[Vis]  
[Bok]  
[ /?Add]

Installing... Transhumanal Neural Mesh  
Installing... Nanodermis  
Installing... Memory Recording [762/878 YB³ Remaining]  
Installing... Visceral Nanotube Power Supply  
Installing...

My eyes flashed to life before dying, the second time in as many centuries. Choices you make in past lives always come back to haunt you. You reap what you sow, no matter how you behave your second time around. A man can be Christ, yet if he had been Satan in a life before his own, the universe will always deal him the loser hand. That's the brutal way karma works.

A pseudo-reality called the 'fourth dimension' contain in itself two paradigms: good permeates one side. Evil prefers the other. In order for this line to exist both paradigms must coexist, both ever in conflict, however without the ability to nullify each other, for example by severing critical elements. Without evil, there can be no true good. Without good, there can be no evil.

[Welcome valued life-form! Thank you for using our services. Please adjust your heads up display to your fancy. The phenomenon that you are about to experience is mankind's first apotheosis.]  
[Please Insert Neural Mesh ID]

Yes there is a problem with this distended world view! I remember her perfect poem...

* * *

"Believe what thou shall  
But 'tis what I know be true.  
Evil is but a point of man's view.

Devils! Soulless creatures;  
Logic saves me but God, not true  
Whether reapers or demons or harriers of reason!  
I sully your pride; I say to you;  
Evil is but a point of man's view."

* * *

That was the opening to her novel, _Satanic Rites of the Svlinti Arkana_, 1812. Here she never lived, but in my false dreams, she is to the Federation what Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Frost were to America. Like them she was my voice, and my reason. What is good? What is evil? Is there any difference? No matter what you say, no matter how hard you struggle to force others to accept that what your mind has conceived is undebatable fact, it is but nothing more than opinion, your own point of view. Petty pre-school driven notions of good and evil dominate culture like a wolf in a herder's clothing. My Bogart mind wished I understood that before now. I might not be here.  
I might not be Von Mars.

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Something sounding worse than ten thousand wasps buzzing starts down after the _click_. I couldn't block it out, no matter what I did. An attempt to disengage my ears made it worse as the same whittling ringing phantom whistle that struck me down before burned my eardrums. Heat. Heat pricked my skin until the urge to flinch overpowered my other senses. No response. I'm paralyzed. My body's paralyzed. My body is here for the ride- all that makes me 'me' is here, a gelatinous three pound mass of neurons and whatever else They wanted in. It is then I understand- perhaps all I am now is this neural mass. Where is my body? Where is my skin?

[Thank you]

"Elber Power under surveillance." This damn black cocoon muffles everything! "Self-awareness is at an optimal level. Cognizance of reality is peaking at fourteen percent. Green across the board. It's OK to go." Why were their words making so little sense? I could see their words and hear their faces.

Wait, it's all beginning to come back. My eyes run rampant with static. Something like a computer...  
When I next became conscious, I stood on silent grey tiles of an amorphous metal and watched faceless men punch words and stab images into my brain.  
To the left of me, my eyes told me what I insisted was a lie. A lie is just the truth well distorted. To the left of me, sitting chained to a bench, was a fifth generation God. The same one I built to make- there's Earth again. That's what I built her for. From in front of me was Planet Earth screaming back through a window. My eyes glazed over as the word 'home' flashed in my mind with the brightest of neons, leading to a titanic clash with my memories.  
"Von Mars, you are cleared for combat." Buzz. "_Von Mars_, you are cleared for combat." Buzz. "_Von Mars, are you functional?_" Buzzat. Buzzat. That's it. _Buzzat!_ It makes sense. It all makes sense like an empty puzzle that, once you build it, realize that its blankness is a simple picture.  
And then it was all black once more.

* * *

:: I'll just wait for the sinny, next Tuesday at 7/6 Central. Weak, sub-mediocre novels were never my glass of soda. A soft podooshka was all I needed for a good hour of deep thinking. ::  
Tails closes the book and sets it on a head standing chest next to his bed, resulting in a pleasant little 'thump' that turns some heads in the front room.  
"¿He's in there, isn't he? ¡Hey, Tails! Get outta there and come play with us. If Sonic keeps failing like this, I think everyone's gonna win at least once!" Ignored. After a long boot-up, the TV flashes pictures. ::Finally, the TV came alive. Noise invaded the airwaves, and there were no Players to stop them. In its defense, most of society overdoses on the red pill to remain sane. One lick of the blue pill, and all that you hear is the endless insane chant, '¡Blah blah blah blah blah!' Better to live a corpse than die a zombie.::  
"I wonder where we're heading first..." the fox asks to himself with morose interest, knowing his friends know less than he. :: ¿Yes, what else is there to do on this Charon? ¿Why not just fall behind the towering wall of milky sleep? And when they rise why, the sun shall run against the sky, and then the gods up high may sing 'How fun it is to die.' ¿Why am I speaking in rhythms? ¿What have they done to me? Maybe I'm still paranoid. ::  
"¿What's the deal with the cammin?" At that everyone looked away from Amy and back out the windows. ::The roadas buckled once after doing it twice, and I kept assuming the Black Van was responsible. ::The tires seem flat and limp and stagger over every imperfection in the road, and there is a more than peculiar white van trailing the Globelander.  
An hour later at the most...  
"¿Is the Black Van still behind us?"  
"¿Does it look like I've been paying attention?"  
"¿Do you want a fist inside your nose?" Knuckles scoffs and turns away from Amy. Silver, face sagging at them, stands up and walks to the back room and looks out the window. He flinches, shuts the curtains, and walks back to the front, stiff and brisk.  
With a quiver to his voice, he says, "Guys, we're gonna die." :: The Black Van is a white van that has been dogging us since we left Minatown, or perhaps, more accurately, since we entered Station Square. Already agents of Bæphomet have left the creepy peeking of eyes behind them, and that was so long ago, I can't remember what it looked like when they stopped. Now they're in the open. The open is welcoming. Oh say if you can shy off from nothing if that same nothing is something anything could be if given everything at its disposal. ::

"Hey, T-Tails... ¿Are you hearing this?" I stopped. ¿What was I supposed to hear? "Listen. Stop flinching your ear- just- just listen." I tried. Yoda said do, but I tried. That's why I failed.  
"Sonic, but I don't hear anything."  
"Y-y-yeah, I know. It's just there's this... echo. ¿Y'know?" ::I'd know if I could hear it.:: "You probably can't hear it that well over the, uhm, the engine." :: Nice way to put it. ::  
"We've been hearing it for an hour now," Knuckles called out from the front room. ::That explains it. That explains why I've heard nothing. Because they've been hearing for an hour, and that means there's nothing left over for me to hear.::

::?Really¿ ::

"¿Whazzit sound like?"  
"When we speak or whatever, there's something like this... barely... barely audible buzzing echo just behind our words." Sonic emphasizes this, holding his hands in a parenthesis in front of his head trying to summate the effect, earning half-dead stares from Tails. "It's almost but not quite noticeable."

It's that darn silent point of light up above that speaks most of what they shall all endure.  
Several years ago, 2009 to be exact, these celestials had been the rulers of the world. Now they're just desperate to be relevised to a world that never knew they ever existed.

oOoO~OoOoOo~OoOoOoOo~OoOo~OoOo~OoOoOo~OoOoOoOo~OoOo

4 Years Ago, from December 2008 to April 2009, I came up with a bizarre and visual oriented fanfiction known as SBDRF: Sonic and Blaze Do Russia Future. Far removed from a fanfiction I wrote under the same name in 2011, as well as its recently remastered predecessor, SBDRF 2009 was a massive undertaking of unbridled creativity and avant garde psychedelia-oriented subject matter. It was Freudian expressionism at its purest, and yet had no general rhyme or reason. There were no limits, nothing stopping me from imagining even the most inane, confused, and outlandish of storylines. A new-age science fantasy, I would call it, that was borne entirely from a desire for evocative imagery. The fact was, I was in over my head- a young teenager with no knowledge and full ignorance of the finer aspects of writing attempting to tackle something so fragile in struct, and overall impossible and even meaningless to pursue. The point of SBDRF was image, description, mood at a particular moment in time, the character of the world around you over the characters themselves... Who reads a story to see a picture? Lush descriptiveness, 'feeling of mind', all this is nothing more than elements of fiction.  
Nearly 400 chapters were planned, extremely few of which could have been acted upon at the time due to the woefully inept and bare literary skills I then owned. Over 1,100 story ideas were created in a 4-month period, many of them originating as dreams vivid and lucid, by way of chance thoughts at the right time; by observing conditions around myself at the right time (such as pink cirrus clouds on a 'blue' dusk) or by observing certain pictures (such as a geodesic dome in the evening; of Legoworld in Mall of America; Mediterranean cities...); specific, cerebral, or atmosphere-building/setting music (usually by the act Radiohead or something from Jet Set Radio Future), or finely-crafted mental movies or even excessive waves of lucid dreams. One way or another, SBDRF 2009 has greatly influenced nearly every single story I've written since, and even many that came before it, from which I've learned literary paradigms without ever coming across them until recently. In fact, read any story on my profile, and you're reading SBDRF's legacy. Some stories tapped into SBDRF 2009 more than others. However, only thrice in my FFN career have I actually dared to use actual SBDRF chapters as their own stories- all of them in 2009 at that.  
Exactly 4 years have passed since its inception. Since 2009, my own penmanship skills have grown exponentially every year. To help in building myself as writer, why not go to the story that made me who am I today? So I figured that perhaps this would be a great time to return to SBDRF. It will never again be what it was. I cannot delude myself into believing that a true second attempt at SBDRF will bear any real fruits- this time, I'll play it slowly, and focus on individual storylines instead of cramming a million down your throat at once.  
I created a myriad of story ideas, storylines, and stories that were supposed to be mere chapters.  
This is one of them.

* * *

_Unidentified Flying Hedgehog_ 2009, 2012; and SBDRF: Sonic and Blaze Do Russia Future 2009 are fan works by the Sky Hedgehogian Maestro.  
_Sonic the Hedgehog_™ is owned by Sega Corporation®. I do not claim ownership of Sonic the Hedgehog franchise or any characters, locations, or concepts contained therein. Also, any fan made creations that Sega may consider or relegate canon at any future point, I hereby remove any claim of ownership over only at their word.  
SBDRF: Sonic and Blaze Do Russia is no longer a valid or active literary work, however the Sky Hedgehogian Maestro asserts ownership over any fan-made concept not relegated canon.

© The Sky Hedgehogian Maestro ( id.7664739) under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. No elements owned by Sega Corporation are claimed to be owned and all fanfiction are exempt from this license.

Von Mars © 2011 belongs to Syked-U-Neuromancer Publishers. I do not own or claim ownership over any characters, locations, or concepts contained and/or presented in the novel.


	2. Byodokan Moonrise

It is darker than a carload of assholes and bleaker than a flying saucer on fire. Violets and blacks ride high in the sky as scud storm clouds, all massive in size, plant themselves in front of the main mass of storms. Both hedgehog and fox let the incensed winds sift through their furs while laying back, nothing more to be said. All the clouds pass and heaven's vengeance runs wild throughout the forest. The artificial dies and the natural thrives. The riots began the day before and he vowed to take part in them. Sonic warned him that it would be dangerous, that he was playing with things he needn't try. Why he ignored him, yes he did, and here Miles is now. The scum faced and the rust-ruined all chant in unison outside the dying man's palace, and some whisper that a charge into the gates is imminent. Some even light the fuse.

The masses rush into and through the golden gates and firebombs crash through the circus tents. Monuments begin to fall and Doctor Robotnik is paraded through the crowd, finally dethroned after so long the leader of a repressed empire.

"It's that crazy dream again," Tails moans. He smacks his lips before ruining a glass with shaved ice. Why not a bit of cherry flavoring to go with it? So dry his mouth is, and water- what irony that it's lifegiving- always makes it worse. His sinuses ache, as if someone knocked in the uppermost part of his muzzle with a hammer. Odd squiggly lines also dance in his eyes, yet each time he tries to focus in, they move away, vanish. Never nap while the sun stands high or just slipping below the horizon line. Once you wake up, all is wrong with you.

**[Byodokan Moonrise]**

¿What's the time? ¿Where's the clock? Not even two in the morning. Everyone, save the ever conscious, ever waspish Shadow, was defeated by the sandman's magic- even Sonic, the one who boasted that he'd be 'winning all night', looks less alive than a rock.

"There is a god," Shadow whispers.

[Saturday]

[Week One]

[1:56 AM]

[Lazar Road]

::The sky was a clean version of what I saw in the dream. Black was the dominant color, but there was this very peculiar deep purple latching onto the edges. Stars etched their way out. Pay attention to the void and more appeared.

Not even strong-hearted enough to speak, it was a single look that I gave into the GPS as to avoid vexing Shadow any further. No sooner had I done that did the first building swish by.

It's a town of silver sheet metal, or of sheet metal that would have been silver and red and gold and so many other colors if the pollution and elements had allowed it. Hard times, a town of sad half-story stores and dirt roads that only led back to the jagged expanses beyond the place's slim borders. I tried to find one unshuttered window. A small serpent of sand trailed the RV, yet this was five times enough to obscure the town.

'Lazar Road'. I honestly thought that was the name of the road, not the town itself. The GPS listed it as having only 90 residents, yet I thought that was far too much for as little development that I saw. Tripping on Sonic's crutches, I stumbled back into my bed in the latter parts of the RV, unsure about going this far this late with no conscious soul watching my move- I mean, 'conscious soul' as in Shadow. ::

A hand punches through the wall, and this hand belongs to none other than Metal Sonic. Tails had not made a move when it happened, nor had he reacted. Instead, the fox groggily asks, "¿What does Eggman want now?"

To this reply, "Tell that loathsome Sonic to meet me in UFOrlando _immediately_."

To this 'nother reply, "¡We're _going _to UFOrlando, you wrench!" from Shadow. "And I'll take as long as I damn well please to get there." Electricity barks as it circuits up and down and all around Shadow's far extended arm, with several tongues lashing out at any jutting point nearby. "_**¡Now get the hell out of my camper!**_" Pain explodes against the side of Metal Sonic's head and, in recoil, he tumbles. If he had ears, their drums would have been whittled to shreds by the whistling of the air rifling around him before his body explodes against a plateau side with the ferocity of a dam buster. It would rain pebbles and rocks for a solid thirty-four minutes.

"W-wow." :: I had wholeheartedly underestimated Shadow's obsession to keep this camper running. However, I won't chalk it up to a need to have fun. I remembered the countless hours of nagging Sonic had done just to get him to step foot on the vehicle, and then the innumerable amount of time it took for Sonic to recover after informing Shadow that he was the driver. No, Shadow is this despotic and demented only because he wants to make us rue this summer, rue ever meeting him, rue our own births. ::

A _clunk clack_ silently echoes throughout the camper and Shadow re-appears in the windows, walking towards the gas nozzle. But Tails quickly loses interest. Something else catches his eyes, but what it is, he is not immediately sure. What might look like nothing more than a plane's lights aren't necessarily what it is. They are on their way to UFOrlando, and Tails knows it. Any and all abnormalities must be watched, for the nightsnatchers will take them if they are not alert, and all they do will be on you. Taking notice, Tails crawls across his bed and runs his hand through a woefully disorganized pile of notepads and e-papers.

* * *

A SCHIZOID'S GUIDE TO YOUR NEW-AGE GODS

WHEN THEY'RE NEAR...

- Ultraradical temperature swings; 50 degree swings in a single, compact spot, sometimes mere feet. Do not confuse with specters, ghosts, and phantoms.

- They are ghosts to rural or desert environments, and constantly hang around empty roads but that is no excuse to laze in more densely populated areas. They will take you even in a crowded apartment in a downtown metropolis.

- 4:45 AM Safe. Remember that time- 4:45 AM.

- If you want to lessen the chance to be taken, turn off all lights and electrical objects.

- The death of anything electrical signals their approach. Psychic events may also ensue.

- No loud music outside at night, unless there are a large number of people with you. They can and will still take you, but may not risk it.

- If you have a strong, vivid dream about one, esp. if it is not fantastic but feels like an actual encounter or sighting, you will see one soon. Personal contact is imminent. Expect sleep paralysis within a/the week.

- **They. Remember. You.**

- Do not sleep with your head near or facing a window. (Why this is important is not explained.)

- Certain colorful environmental factors are actually psychic warning signs- a green flash, individual red clouds at night, a purple horizon, an off color evening oft with a single hue dominating the landscape, a rainbow of flashes in your closed eyes, fire rainbows on the horizon, etc.

- Don't watch or read something about them if you're worried about a visit while you sleep. You didn't do it to yourself, but you did mark your neurons.

* * *

:: Nutcases wrote this, but does that really matter right now? After all, where we're going, they're _besieged _bythem. 'Happy maniacs, they must be,' I thought to myself. ::

And here comes Shadow. There goes the light. If men return to their tagged specimen, there's no reason to doubt these skyward celestials will forget their terrestrial petri dish. Before I left, there had been some kind of ringing from beyond the edge of sound. Much like the echo from the other day. Like fagged whistles, they petered out. Why should I risk my life for Shadow's help. :: In without much motivation to stay, Tails exits the RV- to Shadow's chagrin, for he wastes minutes. Precious minutes.

::Over the sightly mess of houses and shacks were more sky diamonds. If they were crafted by three-finger hands or were simply diamonds born from their minds, I could not know.::

::Yet::

"Get back in that bed! We're leaving." Shadow began storming back, but, despite his rate, I did not hear him step onto the RV when he should have. Shadow turned tense as he turned around. That scant shriek of a skyward firework! His hearing sharpened- I can tell, for his ears became active, twitch... And there they were- Over the purple ridges! Firing off at rapid succession, almost to the point of being annoying to the eyes.::

Shadow? He has a handful of steering wheel and slams his feet onto the accel pedal.

"Shadow!" and such exclamations fail to influence him. Tails breaks through the driver's door, and wrests with Shadow for control, but is woefully overpowered and suffers a broken cheek in his fall. Shadow runs the RV through plenty buildings- and this is a serious statement- _Shadow wipes out half the town of Lazar Road._

::We passed the Madrican border within the hour and the border was hundreds of miles away from Lazar Road. In all that time, in all that space, we could still see the fireworks. Miku was mind-raping him. ::

OoOo~OoOoOo~OoOoOoOo~OoOo~OoOo~OoOoOo~OoOoOoOo~OoOo

_Byodokan_ is a term giving to the Sonic anthros by the fanfiction colleague, _Thrippa_, author of "Descent Into Darkness." I have since decided to adopt the term as the common name for the Sonic anthros, however all rights to the term belong to Thrippa.


	3. The Best We've Known Is Yet To Come

[Saturday]

[Week One]

[9:35 AM]

"The next stop's in Madrico City," I told him, pushing his crutches to the side of the table. He stared back at me with flat eyes. I'm not a telepath, but we shared some metaphysical communication in that blip of a span. It was in Madrico City that everything began getting muddy and cheesy.

"Wait, but... Isn't that, like, four hundred miles _back the way we came?_" His voice was insulting but also wrapped with concern.

"I dunno. You're the one who coded the GPS." Shadow spent nearly seventeen days trying to decipher the frightening, baffling lines of code on the custom programmed GPS terminal Sonic built. Sonic coded it. Pity Shadow! Although he crafted it under my direction, out of boredom since he'd been crippled for two months. Already told you, right? About how Shadow nearly killed Sonic? Perhaps soon I should delve into the tale of this event's bizarre aftermath.

Shadow speaks, "And since we're going there, I find it good [advice] to inform you that there are many dangers lurking within its borders. A lot of dead people, a lot of murders." He sounded so... _happy_ saying those macabre words. At the time I considered nothing, but time has lent me understanding- there is a splendid chance he held onto some tragic hope that we'd be killed in the crossfire.

"Yeah, the dead thing's always good," Sonic retorts.

"There's a [fantastic] chance you're gonna end up as a statistic, as one of those in the dead group."

"Really?"

"Madrico City has an _astronomical _murder rate."

**The Best We've Known Is Yet To Come**

_Gunshot_. Sonic ducks, bending his knees and twisting around. Half of a couple of police cars race to the scene, a distorted symphony already wailing in three hundred fifty nine, three hundred and sixty degrees.

"That was the fifty third homicide this hour!" he shouts. "How do they have this many people to _kill_ on a regular basis? Some sort of People Machine? And why isn't-" _Gunshot_. "Why isn't anyone trying to stop this?!" _Gunshot._ It rattles the windows, loud enough to even blow out a nearby pane of glass. For a sound, I'd describe it as banging a maul against a hot tin sheet.

"_**NO.**_" Shadow pulls the fur from his head. His fist up-ends a passing limo, knocking clear out a familiar occupant. The windshield to the sapients' RV has been totaled if you're curious as to why he's gone insane- although, Reader, that can also be tallied up to your own incompetence in reading. Kidding, of course!

"Shadow, chill out! You hurt somebody!" Sonic wobbles to the flipped limo, passed up by his friends. "You can buy a new windshield. Those things go cheap around here." Helping the outted person to their feet, Sonic gasps when he sees-

"Uh... Blaze, what the hell are you doing here?" I can't say Amy said that politely, but she spoke without hostility.

"U-uh! N-n-no reason!" Blaze, with no queenly dignity in her actions, dusts herself off and rushedly looks over her shoulder- actually, if I am not mistaken, her normally stoic face is doing a poor attempt at hiding smiles. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but... you... you haven't seen anything 'weird' lately, have you? Haven't seen anyone by the name of Tiertiat, I presume?"

"Nope." That could not have been a serious reply. "Wait, 'tea hair, tea hot'... wh- what? N-no."

_Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop!_

"What the heck's goin' on?" Sonic takes but two oblong steps before gasping. "It's some Christian play." A man- sporting long hair, crown of thorns and blood for every square inch of exposed skin- is pushed along by faux Romans and a spiteful(ly bored) crowd.

"Yeah, they do this every year at about this time," a semi-nappy-long-haired man, quite kind in his demeanor yet flamboyant in his fancy-dress- he's an egg with a Jesus wig- told us.

"But is Easter not for another nine months?"

_**BOOM!**_ Actually, it came more across as a _**BANG!**_Something louder than Krakatau shattered eardrums for a mile circumference.

_Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop!_

"What's going on-what's going on?!" Firecrackers and cherry bombs fire off like a machine gun as a stampede of humans and anthros rams into the bippled heroes. Stinging! It stings like nuclear hornets as the firecrackers pop against their bodies. The deranged man in charge of the firecrackers, screaming like a maniac while dressed as a Mexican Braveheart, charges the anthros. Sonic, Amy, and Knuckles are chased down relentlessly. Amy tries to hide behind a bus stop, but the crazed man slips and falls trying to harass her. Another cart of high explosives emerges from the corners and alleys of the tight, colorful homes. Shadow, leaning back on the RV at first, sees this and hikes back inside the camper through the long-gone windshield.

"You damn monkeys!" A firework, a roman candle, straight blasts into the RV's grille. Exploding- not the pyrotechnics but the hedgehog- he screams, "_I hate humans!_" as he reaches under the grille, but is far too slow. Strands of fire, 'stars' as they call them, fling out from under the camper. Luckily, that seems to have been the worst of it, as nothing beyond a few coughs of smoke persist- those even from haphazardly fallen paper rather than the vehicle itself. Thank goodness, for Madrico.

oOoO~OoOoOo~OoOoOoOo~OoOo~OoOo~OoOoOo~OoOoOoOo~OoOo

"Do you know the Bible story?" a spotly little man asks to Shadow.

"You mean the fairy tale about the hippie who was hung from a tree and returned as some zombie? No. I don't dare touch the stuff." _Gunshot._

"Where'd the egg come from? Literally? Oh yeah, that's what Jesus wanted to be remembered by. 'Just flog me hundreds of times and shove nails through my hands, and then- and feet- and then go shoot everyone in the head and blow up everything that moves- and paint some eggs while you're at it. I'll be proud of you. You deserve to be my Chosen people.'" I don't think I've ever heard Sonic being so scathingly sardonic and nihilistic before. _Gunshot._ _Gunshot._

oOoO~OoOoOo~OoOoOoOo~OoOo~OoOo~OoOoOo~OoOoOoOo~OoOo

Our tour couldn't continue after we came across their cemetery.

"For the love of Chaos, this is insane, look at this! Their- their cemetery's bigger than the city!" Aerialwise, the cemetery is like an amoeba swallowing a virus. Speckled dots- people- parade throughout the expanse of headstones. _Gunshot. _More people walk the streets of the cemetery than the streets of the city. Construction crews laze around the skyscrapers downtown, yet work fiercely and endlessly to add onto the grave city's borders as a stream of the newly and grateful dead rush inwards at a pace beyond that of the most raging of rivers. There is a traffic jam of coffins. So many coffins rub against each other, they start fires. In only some sadistic dream could this next line have been more comforting.

"For us, this is normal, man."

"_That's what's frightening!_"

Once back onto the camper, we had all settled down and let the steamy, dubious Madrican cuisine stew and raise disaster in our fiery bowels. We hadn't seen Blaze for several hours by this point in time, although she had made mention that we would "certainly" see her again if we followed the route to UFOrlando. That's what it struck me like a baseball bat to the head. The mysterious orb last night, Metal Sonic's tragicomic one-line appearance, Blaze's concern- something big's going down in UFOrlando. That's where our fate lies. That's where our fate shall tow us.

But for now, we rest and vacation in Madrico City from the comfort of our RV. Shadow had ventured out and has bought padlocks and security systems. Yes, it obliterated our freedom for the moment, but Shadow wasn't the fascist type- as soon as we were out of here, I knew he'd lose interest in keeping up with us, so we kept such worries out of our mind. All left to do would be to enjoy ourselves. Skip this part of the story if you dare.::

oOoO~OoOoOo~OoOoOoOo~OoOo~OoOo~OoOoOo~OoOoOoOo~OoOo

"Have you ever heard of non-Newtonian liquids?" is what Tails says as he pulls out a multitude of odd items, from corn starch and salt to Kool-Aid and powdered clay.

"Like, no?" Sonic shuffles around on the sofa, only now paying his friend any heed. _Gunshot._ _Gunshot. Gunshot. Cheering._ _BANG._ ::A shake of the head and a disgruntled sigh is all we shared at the time.::

"It's like a liquid that can also be a solid."

"Okay?"

"Um... do we have any running water right now?" The insanity behind this story is something far beyond Southern reaches of bizarro, for purposes I will save, I shall not dwell on.

"We should by now." _Gunshot._

Tails pours in a small amount of water into the corn starch. It comes to the point where it seems to be a gelatinous mass. When he tips the canister over, it flows ever so slowly. Yet, when he taps it with his fingers, it merely jiggles. However, upon resting his fingers in them, they sink. Sonic's eyes open wide as he gets to playing with this new, low budget toy.

"Holy..."

"Yeah!" Tails's eyes are alit as the wings of teaching take flight. _Gunshot. _"It's like quicksand. If you're firm enough with it, and if you don't liquefy the stuff, you can just pull something out pretty easily."

And that was that. A fine diddly with no connection to the outside plot, right?

oOoO~OoOoOo~OoOoOoOo~OoOo~OoOo~OoOoOo~OoOoOoOo~OoOo

Knuckles flips on the telly.

"-dead people are everywhere, mis amigos," grimly surmises the newsman.

"What's wrong, Knuckles?" Sonic shouts from the kitchen.

"Damn blasted TV hasn't been on two seconds and they're already talking about dead people!"

"Well what did you expect? Dying is Madrico's national freaking past time. It's like some demented Pink Floyd track stuck in reverse." _Gunshot._

At which point, we wasted no expense, pardon my French, 'getting the hell out' of Medico.

"Oh Chaos, I feel like we're a bunch of idiots abroad..." Sonic groans. _**BANG.**_ "_OH_ shoot..." _Gunshot._ "Not literally!" _Gunshot._ "Stop!"

"Let's just leave this to the Madricans. Please? Can we- can we go?" _Gunshot! _The thunder of the shot rolls across the air.

_Gunshot. Gunshot. Gunshot. Gunshot._

"Damn." _Gunshot_. The sheer density of death became so thick, it reached the point where we could not utter syllables and not know that five souls have left this world. By all calculations, if each gunshot equaled one death, then the entire population of Madrico City should be spent within two months. :: _Gunshot._

"Jackasses jacked our tires!" A disheartening 'clunk' comes from the- _Gunshot_- comes from the connection for the steering wheel, and the harder Shadow pulls, the looser the steering wheel becomes. "_Infected assholes- you will rue the day you messed with Shadow the Hedgehog!_" _Rapid fire_.

::We eventually escaped. However, this required the purchasing of a ladder, as the only tires for sale in all of Madrico City were for the Flaming Tyrs, a campy set meant for a bus-crushing monster truck. Imagine the people inside that Sedan, imagine what their expressions must be when a camper with thirty foot high tyrs roared up next to them. Imagine our inevitable 'epic fails' as well tried to disembark from this monstrosity. I can't exactly say Shadow wanted to drive a monster RV, but we all agreed that whatever we have now, we must deal with.::

This goes down to become the Taco Paco Event.


	4. I Might Be Wrong

Standing in front of the indigo background, grungy half-lit silhouettes prance around oblivious to their skyborne cousins. Those Davos are in line and these NSRs are happily observing. Murder and madness, convoluted conspiracies, and animemo goodness ensues. Meanwhile but several inch fractions of a mile away, sweet decadence decays our young fox's will to necessarily starve any longer.

Two toasted slices of bread? Check.

Peanut butter? Check.

All that I need now... is...

"Cake icing and sprinkles!" Tails smears fluffy white icing onto the face of a browned bread slice and marries it with the peanut butter decorated half. "Yum..." Silver lays his eyes down on the white and speckled rainbow line atop, from his vantage point, it is atop, the peanut brown condiment. He doesn't revile what he sees but views it with curious ignorance.

**(I Might Be Wrong)**

[Thursday]

[Week Two]

[2:03 AM]

Jars and boxes thump and clank together silently enough for their audio aftereffects to affect not one of the sleeping heroes. The door clamps shut. Tails sucks down a slog of face-tightening orange juice but nearly spits it all back in upon sight of the illumination of the blinds. All their curves point down, allowing anorexic rectangles, now rhombuses of golden light to shower down and scurry across the floor. Without much real thought, Tails steps forward and pinches the blinds downwards.

Thump-thump... thump thump... thump thump goes his heart as he realizes that they are alone, stranded, in the expanse of a desert. The acceptance of the fact that there are no street lights for ten dozen miles also punches in the realization. Ebony mental lucidity juggles itself with an august vehemence to surrender.

Tails sprints back into the quarters and slips under his sheets, throwing them up in a wake. No sound. Good. They sound like distorted, digital kazoos, right? Wait... no... Most people say they don't make sound! It slips across the floor, now along- there it goes on the wall, the light...an illuminated artificial ghost. The numbers on his clock... the numbers on his clock are- oh god! This is their approach.

::False hands massaged my neck. What's that? Someone was going for my neck! Please, blankets, protect me! Oh, my ears. Why are my ears ringing so terribly? A warbling kind of ringing it is, but am I hearing this or is a trick, even a folly of my hearing?

A terrible chiming and ringing returned, and the demonized voices of the ones I know nothing of whisper and scream at once. All at once! What else will they let me do by shut my eyes?::

"Tails... ugh... can you hit the A/C?"

"Sonic, be quiet!" Tails spits and begs, wrapped firmly in the blankets, sheets, and pillows.

"Tails, what's up?" No more responses. "Hey, Shads! I think-"

"Keep thinking and I'll shove your brain up your-!"

"S-Shadow!" I cried. "D-d-did you s-s-see anything?"

"All I've seen in the past three hours have been pavement, the Madrican desert, and the remnants of my sanity splattered across the windshield. One of those isn't real, and I'm not sure which anymore."

"B-b-b-but n-n-not-th-thing e-else, r-r-right?"

"Hol' up. I know what's going on here. You saw a ghost, didn't you?" ::How I wish I did. Even a ghost knows kindness.:: "Where'd you get this RV from, Shadow? Transylvania?"

Shadow throws a disgruntled sigh before growling this one, "If you blank fools are so damaged to believe this nonsense, then-" And he pulls out an Acme Ghost Hunting Kit. He doesn't let go of the wheel and, for this, the others suffer a mass whiplash.

The kit was on the other side of the room.

oOoO~OoOoOo~OoOoOoOo~OoOo~OoOo~OoOoOo~OoOoOoOo~OoOo

"Hello?" ::We the vacationers conformed to a seance circle. Silver looks dazed and confused, and his eyes were a milky white instead of his glowing golden. I took careful mental note of this.:: "If you are with us, can you tell us why you're here?" ::I didn't believe it was just a ghost, but I could see the others superengaging their ears in a curious attempt to eavesdrop on the fleeting whispers of the other side, even as their logic reminds them that only this device to my side stands any chance.:: "Is this your RV? ... Do you have a name?" ::Nothing.:: "What's your name?"

"We have contact!"

They check the recording on the EVP.

"_Hello? ... __**hi**__..._ _If you are with us, can you tell us why you're here?_"

"Hi. You heard 'hi', right?"

"Yeah!" The commotion with the others began. I heard it myself as well and that was the first moment I began to believe that this supernatural venture is only bound to stretch deeper into the world of the paranormal that with what I had just seen earlier. Phantoms and specters in factor, however, they were not what I was looking for. Perhaps at a later time, I figured, I'd come back to the ghost side of this trek and why they are haunting us, but at that moment, I needed to know more about the extra-terrestrials and why _they _are haunting us too.

"Say something else!" Amy pushes to Sonic.

"Oh! Uh... Do you- do you like us on this R-" clack- "Whoa!"

I knew not of what Shadow's face looked like, but I could only imagine it crunching together, his brow in an obtuse 'V', and the hedgehog himself growling as these things were taking place aboard his camper.

"_Xxxxrrree.._"

"That was from the EVP."

"_That?_" Knuckles asked in exasperation.

"That didn't even sound like a voice. It sounded like someone was using a distorted guitar to speak. Are we gettin' freakin' Jimi Hendrix on this thing? Hey, hey, Jimi! Jimi, if you're with us, I wanna know, whaddya think of Sonic Underground? Did it piss you off yet?"

"Well, at least we know something's here," Amy says with a bit of a jumpy nature to her voice.

"Y'know, a vacation with a ghost? Kinda cool." ::I suppose that was the bright side of the day. Then again, it is ever a good day when the _bright side_ is the fact your home is haunted?::

"Yeah, I can live with that. It'd be something to-"

"Whoa! An orb! I saw an orb!" ::That was your eyes poking fun at you. The real obs were above our heads.::

"_**No.**_" ::That came down harder than the asteroid that said hello to the dinosaurs.::

"Shadow, what's wrong now?"

"The... The..." Shadow lunges at Sonic, locking him in a neck erasing head lock. "Fix your sh— GPS." Sonic ganders at it from a small distance, then crouches next to the thing. Shadow- ha!- Shadow growls and curls his fist when the only troubleshooting he sees being done is a random tap on the thing's back and the pressing of every button. Is that a knife? No- but he is ready to pull out a twenty-inch knife and end Sonic from the ass up the second he hands the dead electronic map back to him.

"Can't do nothin', bro. I don't even see a problem."

"It's not working!" ::So _I _got to work. The sun was yawning on the horizon by the time I had identified the culprit of what blackened the chips and shorted the charred wires.

"It looks like a high-concentrated, directed EMP blast deactivated all electronic and magnetic circuitry, and overwhelmed-"

"In English."

"Something fried the GPS software and hardware."

"Wh-"

"Just _annihilated_ it. You can't even use this anymore." ::Sonic chucked it out the window, but Shadow's eyes remained fixated on it until it ruffled the leaves of a shrub.::

"If that means I-"

"Yes, Shadow. At least until we can get a new GPS, you have to use paper maps from now on." ::Oh his anger. Oh his ire. In a manner, much like Doof. Should he had obtained an inferior stigma of self control, how I would be friendless! And I love Sonic too. His funeral would've been the most traumatic moment of my life.::

"Why not just use our phones? I have several apps that could-"

"Give one to me. Now." Amy tosses hers over.

"Don't worry, I have two more with me."

"What the... It's..."

"What? Not working? I've been charging it all night!"

"Hey, mine's bunk too."

"This RV... It's not starting!"

"The TV's toast too."

"My other phones are out."

"Not the fridge!"

"All our electrical stuff's fried!"

"Cr-rap."

::They wanted us.::

They want them.

::And they'll get us.::

In UFOrlando.


	5. The Failed Abduction

::We set in for the night, quite right and ready for this next little fright that came from the north. We set in for the night, and, after a rage-filled session of online fragging and long-range head shots, we... Give it a sigh- _I _hid under my covers.

There was nothing else to drink besides a strawberry punch that _someone_ added too much sugar to. Petit fors and ultra-sweet strawberry punch all night. What a lunch. What a dinner. But it was OK. Perhaps the best I've ever had, and perhaps it's the overdose of sweets that wrecked my mind like LSD. For as much as I must've eaten, yes, it does make sense, how it might've come to be.::

"Tails. Wake- up! We're playin' Tetrix. High score is 1,500,000."

"You hacked the game!" Tails screams back. The Globelander bumps, a rut stumbling it for half of a second. Anyone and everyone with the system the Tour use know what this will mean. Yes, yes, yes, this means ire and rage!

"Awww... man." ::I _told _myself not to ask them. Don't bother, since it's their fault. I _told _ them how to set their 360 and I _told _them how as well as what they should do to keep it down. No, they don't listen.::

"Nooo..." A weak one. "**DAMN IT.**" A strong one. Something has been broken, and the wall has a dent! ::And they deserve it. All night, they were endlessly testing their prowess in Tetrix. What the heck. What just happened there? And then they suffered both Rings of Death. No more Tetrix. Why. Why would they sell Tetris on a disk, and then bother to 'cooly' misspell the dang thing? You can download it. You can pirate it. A waste of money, that's what it was.

Ugh... These were my rusty thoughts and I needed sanctuary anywhere besides Charon. Instead, I turned on my mp3 player, are dedicated and nothing but binaural sounds and entered some sort of lucid dream. It began with my eyes and mind feeling as if plummeting down a four dimensional warp tunnel with metaphysical flashes passing through. Until I could see three huge gears. Nirvana and dream into Gearworld, but it lasted less than a second.::

Tails pops up and sits erect. A wave of lights filters through blinds, but these he ignores, and it's the lack of noise that startles him. Is Shadow not driving?

:: Instead, there was a rich and terrible ringing and a static not unlike the sound of a crashing ocean through a cup on your ear. Every beat of my heart thrashed my chest, and I know it must've been instinct but I ran into a chest right underneath the floor. The chest locked behind me. All psychic events possible could never penetrate. All but impregnable. Actually, it was impregnable. I could hear nothing, and they shouldn't have been able to hear me. The others I couldn't concern myself with, even if I had to- the chamber could hold no more than my mass and breathing space, for five minutes. Which had passed by that time, except that as I left, I was grabbed! Struggled, all my might in my strikes, and leapt to the window. My fist ruined the glass, and I jumped, the nasties tearing at me! What happened next, I don't know- but I crashed into the desert with a roll, tumbling one way for several seconds before the most awful shriek attacked my ears. I was paralyzed! They had me. No matter how I threw my body around, it didn't respond. I screamed.::

"Tails! Holy effing God!" Sonic scoops up his wobbling friend, his face wide and shocked.

"Why did that _stupid_ fox boy jump out the window?" Shadow screams from afar, and his posture is one of potential harm.

"Don't call him stupid, man!"

"His spine's shot, but I can fix it." Silver rubs his hands across Tail's spinal column and, after one thrust, lets Tails sit up.

"Ahh! Ah-ah... wh... Wha.."

"Why'd you jump out a freaking RV traveling at frickin' one hundred n' seventy miles per hour? You coulda been killed!" Amy cries. ::I didn't have an answer. Actually, it wouldn't have made any sense if I did. That's the story of the failed abduction. Oh, wait, that's right. There was a fairy in the distance, wearing boots and dancing with a dwarf, and it was bright and it seemed to be following a flying triangle. I recognized that one, the triangle. It was a model VS-2. Orion. Must've been from UFOrlando. But was it real?::

"Yo, Sil, man. You fixed Tail's spine, but you can't even fix my leg?!"

**[THE FAILED ABDUCTION]**


	6. Meeting People Is Easy

Tails wouldn't care to be in the city's borders if he hadn't needed to, but, sir or madam, as you may have figured, it would be a great afforded opportunity to confront the demons of Madrico. The Taco Paco Event behind them, this young fox- I say not immature but young- has begun obsessing his mind to connect with his stalkers once more.

On the road... on the bored, stretched, mindless, nameless, endless road. Funny thing, in twenty-forty minutes, at most four hours, he'll see this as an adventure of some sort before collapsing back into rolling his dying eyes at a hopeless, mobius road.

**Meeting People Is Easy**

**(Or, Perhaps, We Are Trying To Get More Reviews From You)**

[Thursday]

[Week Two]

[5:26 PM]

UFOrlando waded through the twisted mess of words and stood bold and proud. More importantly, UFOrlando had finally entered the borders of a local- is this regional?- these regional maps. Notice those pocked veins wiggle around on Shadow's temple and forehead. And look at the steering wheel- where Shadow presses, it's conformed to his hands!

"Yo, uh..." Sonic is careful to craft his words and define his directed voice. "S-Shadow? Yeah, uh... we wanna stop for- uh- snacks-"

_Screeeeeech! Thud, thud, thud, thud._ _Smmmmckk..._

They pick themselves up from the floor rubbing whichever body part hit the windshield. But o' how unlucky Sonic was in his fall! Sonic and Shadow have fallen on each others lips. That fist to Sonic's gut won't kiss, kill him, but it shall put blood on his lip for some time.

"**One.**"

"Wuh... One what?" ::At the time, I was as confused as the others, but Shadow gave us nothing resembling a hint. Instead, the door clacked open and we were kicked off in front of a dodgy store. Wow, the failure of Sonic's GPS has already proven to be spectacular, cataclysmic...::

"One... minute? One ring? One store? What?"

"Get." ::We jumped here.:: "Your. Crap."

Although they had all entered the store, Tails hangs back and spots the tinted windows of the RV. Spaghetti arms flail and a large folded rectangle flies around. Tails hears the bang even from here as the arms and paper hit the dashboard.

"Aggghhh!" Such a pained, distressed cry, such as that of a hedgehog trapped in a paper towel tube. Tails turns as soon as the garbled and obscene exits Shadow's mouth and enters the air.

A fifth look at the chili (and the hot dog and the bun) was the final confirmation that this could be the most disastrous decision of his life. The slimy goo water atop the salty and stale diarrhetic mess feinting to be chili; a pink and brown speckled, dingy, waterlogged, middle school cafeteria-borne frank; the greened, sour, flaky and dry bread bun, all this comes together on one sadistic disregard for digestive well-being. A decision Sonic, fortunately, has made to avoid, and some others, unfortunately, chose against their better judgements.

Knuckles, voice deadly as his breath abuses Sonic's nose, comes to him to ask, "Let's buy a new GPS. For Shadow, y'know?" I mislead you by choosing the word 'ask', but Sonic may have taken it seriously.

"I think Shad's is gonna survive without a new one." Amy, breath rank, offers a rebuttal.

"Sonic, I am not getting back on that screaming metal death-trap if Shadow's still a rampaging homicidal maniac."

::That's where I came in and added my own opinion. Sonic's face soured and he gave me nothing but a scowl as he scraped into his pockets and scraped out rings. The system he chose was the last on its rack and, it was... well, it had a lot to prove to say the least. And it wasn't even worth enough to spit on, let alone give up that many rings for it. Sonic was bitter about this not because of any animosity between him and Shadow. The rings he's given are the last we have.

Oh, and the clerk was a crusty little man with an aged, weathered face- rockier and drier than Martian mountains and eyes more stooped than a poor man's pockets during the Great Depression. Also, he had this vibe that would put Marilyn Manson, Anton LaVey, and their army of feaux-goths to shame.

That man was eight years old.::

"Whedeeyoo punks want? Git oot. Git. Gimme dat GP-GP-Git oot." And then- "Stop stuffin' yo' cheeks wit mah food, mang." ::And then Shadow's rage boiled over in the form of a long, drawn, protruding honk. I felt sorry for the wheel.::

"Let's go..." And so began the constant groaning- and not all from mouths.

[Thursday]

[Week Two]

[5:40 PM]

::Lovely. The map's torn. Not only that, but it's torn _right over _where we needed to go. Shadow?::

"Why not just go around the rip?" is Sonic's offer.

"There's no rip in the- the- yeah! Because there's a big hole in the ground!" He earns a back hand slap from Knuckles.

"Why didn't you just buy a map when you were at the store?" Shadow's temple should be bruised by now. How he's still with us is a miracle to be questioned- even the most loyal of soldiers have limits.

"We tried to. This crazy clerk guy- oh good Chaos my stomach- this clerk took our stuff." Everyone who ate that disaster are bending over.

Tails points out the window. "Look!" Ignored.

"Did you get a refund?"Shadow steepens his brow and pinches his dokan temple, before seething in a breath. "I said... Did. You. Get. A. Refund?" And how the others jump!

"N-n-n-no. He m-made us pay for everything, then threw us out and kept the stuff." Shadow's face falls. So they drive down this grungy desert, paying no heed to the isolated shrubs or skeletal remains of whatever unlucky animal came this way. But somewhere along the line- whether it is fifty or five miles, no one keeps count- they pass a sign.

"LAST REST STOP FOR 100 MILES"

Sonic relaxes himself and sighs. "Ah, here we go." But he gains enough tense stress for them all. A smouldering- actually, as they pass it, it _is_ flaming- ruin simmers in the otherwise tender dusk, all sitting where the rest stop presumably once stood. Shadow gasps. Everyone stumbles back one or two steps and various trinkets shuffle and clatter as the RV lets loose a wild rev.

"Look guys!" Tails is ignored again. Knuckles, Amy, and Silver clutch their stomachs and hold their mouths.

Knuckles burps and then says, "We need antacids... urg... No, scratch that, we need anti-diarrheals. Crap!"

"No, we** need** a map. Urrgh. Damn it, I can't believe the GPS is fried. Find a map, imbeciles! Maybe there's another one. For the sake of your spines, there'd better be. The only thing assuring you fools a funeral is how many bullets your puny bodies can take before they collapse. If you want to live, _get_ this (expletive)hole cleaned up, peons."

"That's what they made tomorrow for." Sonic pats Shadow's shoulder. The only response he gets as he walks away (obviously) is a stare as sharp as a chaos spear.

One, far to the right, two, slightly down; three, furthest down; four, slightly up; five, level with One. All coming for them, these white lights, all from left to the most right, before fading into the night.


	7. Off The Map

It's raining in sunshine. More windows rattle in their sills as waves dribble down, obscuring the damn view.

"Perhaps we should just turn around." Rain's returned with a flooded vengeance... really? A down-bow cloud rolls across and kills the sun. In layman's terms, rain clouds have obscured the sun.

"Hey, look at that one!" Crack. "Oop. Sorry."

Shadow explodes, "_Was that Doof's glass canary?_"

"No!" Sonic lies. ::Doof. Good man, Colonel Doof. I knew his rage- his infinite, amazing rage. Shadow could never come close.::

"Damn you, man!" Shadow throws the map, and I say he could have shattered the windshield with paper.

[Common Nonsense]

[Saturday]

[Week Two]

[1:20 PM]

"I said we should turn around!"

"Shut up, Silver!"

"Hey! Don't tell Silv-"

"Is that all you can say?! HUH? Is that the only way you know how to start a sentence, with "hey?", is that it?!" ::Sonic took on a senile look. I've seen this yet I've never grown used to such emotions on _his _face. It is enough to make me scared. His eyes whimpered a weak defence, and his grin quivered.::

"...Hey, man..."

**Slam. Pat. Pat. Pat. Pat. Pat... **Shadow turned a corner, from our sights and from our memories.

"There goes our driver." Sonic kicks a paper bag, but it only rips. And what of their party hats? Rain ruins them, because, oh you know, rain ruins them.

"Can we get Colo-"

"No."

"-nel, oh."

"Colonel Duffy said he'd have us shot. You think we'll survive the _question?_" ::Amy meant that Doof would shoot us while we were asking him to be our driver, before we finished the sentence.

"Yeah, Shadow, Shads- I-I didn't expect _him_ to break so violently. And Doof... he... was pretty loyal."

"Can anyone else drive?"

"Several of us can, but really, who wants to?"

Sigh. "OK. Here's the plan. We get Shadow back-"

"_Duck!_" Sonic hits the ground and gargles under the ankle deep water, Tails toppled over him.

"What the hell!"

"A UFO nearly took your head off!" Tails points to the slate clouds, all a zombie grey. "It was this dull grey color. Look, you see it?"

"Oh yeah! Yeah, I see it. Right next to that flying chili dog!"

"I'm serious! There's a small ball, it's grey! It's juuuust a bit darker than the rest of the sky!"

"Tails, you talking about scud clouds? There are a whole of them."

"No, no. Over _there!_ See it? It's by its- it's gone."

"Ok, OK, OK, let's just get Shadow back." A window, shattered, is left alone by a police car.

::Back on the Globelander, common nonsense was the order of the day.::

"We'll do it with ice cream. Shadow likes vanilla ice cream."

"What flavor?"

"_Vanilla_."

"Yeah, what flavor?"

"Dude?" To this are an army of saddened eyes.

::It didn't end there.::

"I have a goldfish. I'll bribe him with it."

"What's its name?"

"Gold." Lips are smacked.

"Poor fish."

"How is it poor? His name is Gold!"

::Very sad times. I don't feel that I've ever felt more pity for my friends than on that day. Time moved quickly. Soon, we had found Shadow, clinging to the lights inside an alley closer to Lazar Road, oddly enough. Memories of the points of light, of Apple Fisher, of the quadcopter hit me out of the blue and for few reasons I could readily explain.::

"Shadow, will- will you do it? Will you do us this kindness?" Shadow's finger strong in his face, Sonic backs up.

"Only. If you buy the wall."

"Swee-"

"**First.**"

"O-Ok."

::The wall Shadow referred to was a reinforced iron plexiglass "nuclear window." Cheap in Madrico, origins shady.::

"But we gotta get to.. T-tails, there's nothing there. Stop." Setting his hands down twice, he repeats.

"There is, Sonic. There _is!_" Speaks he with this dogmatic fervency. This Sonic sees. But he prays with a gram of concern that these are empty words.

::If only he could see. If only his eyes... But no. Without the fake truth of the eyes, he was righteously blind.::

Lovely bones cackles with death's necrosonic voice, letting Tails's Charon down further into the void. Where they go now, only Shadow knows.

"Hardware store. Now." His nuclear window. "Give me the name."

::We made the attempt. Yet again, we were thwarted. 'Five dollars and five thousand five hundred twenty-five cents' was the cost. Upon the first raised voice of complaint (not of the cost, but of the number!), there were high caliber assault rifles- fifty of them- aimed between our eyes. Shadow broke a promise and now we're no longer allowed on free Madrican soil. UFOrlando on the double."

Five dollars, five thousand-five hundred-twenty-five cents. If you ever hear someone tell you that, run. Don't ask why, don't ask how, run. That isn't a real price. They're trying to rip your ass off. Run.

True story.


	8. Lapis Lazuli

:Funny the way things work. Heh heh... H-here I am, just wasting time talking under some oak tree... I can't say much. No, none of this. No, go away! J-just ignore me! I can't hav- no! I said go!:

This is Blaze.

The crumpled and infernal remains of a limo behind her, this one puts her back against the stump of a tree and falls. How muddied things have become!

:I guess I'm safe here. I guess. I-I don't know anymore. The sun's going down and everything's going blue. Aye, all is overtaken by a tyrannical and downcast slate azure, and this in effect makes us all believe that we can see our faded breaths.

**Lapis Lazuli**

[Wednesday]

[Week One]

[11:42 PM]

"Tiertiat. If you read me, reply. Over. Tiertiat." _Drrrooolllll_ is what we hear from a radiobox. It comes with the lighting up of a violet LED, with a label above it reading 'Output.'

"Please, Your Highness, desist. Your voice is being broadcast to every ship, not just hers. If any one were to adjust their frequencies to this level, they very well may decide to probe us! _Us!_"

"That's a risk I must take if I wish to uncover the truth. She left me the Chronosdavidian Device, so that means she alone knows how to activate it."

"Tssehehee. Ya mean ta tell me ya ain't ev'n turn'it on? Oh aw you jus tryna do sumfink ta get gawd guhl back?"

"Quiet, you!"

:That was me. Ouija board out and Frotskies ripening in mugs, nothing in the room was supposed to distract us from our occult game.:

"Tiertiat. If you read me, reply. Ov-" _Xxxrreeeeeeeeeee!_ All is silent. "Ah- uh, T-tiertiat?" _Xxxreeeeee-xxxreeeeee-xxxreeeeeee!_ "Oh no."

"Wot the fodge wuh dat, li'el ki'in?"

"We have to get out of here." :Crimping my forehead was the most I could do. 'Crucify me, I've just released the hounds! Sound of apple crushing your skull. Flash of light melting your eyes! Painful lesson has been taught. Never stare at the sun. How many times have I told you not to stick your finger into the electrical socket? Holy gods above, I've just pissed off the Davodavidians!:

[Thursday]

[Week One]

[1:54 AM]

"OK, OK, calm down. This can be helped." :My mind a maelstrom, I had hoped that the metaphysical sounds of a binaural beat would soothe my nerves. Within seconds, nine stars, lined up in a "V", shot off from a mountain- from the mountain or from behind? Is that even a mountain? No! No, it's a cloud feinting. I'd call this majestic to see a towering billow act as if it were a distant mountain, if this weren't happening. This is really happening!:

"Princess Blaze, wha- what's happening?!"

"We're ge'ing abducted boy a-lee-ins!"

"No we're not! They don't have to be Davodavidians." :That was me. Always trying to find a right answer, and always lying to the lambs about the wolf.:

"Then what is that?" :A Davodavidian ship. I could not lie. A seven pointed star was what I saw. Seven points by seven. Coming in for the slaughter, for the pounce, they were eying us for Chaos knows how long. For several minutes after, they panicked. My own heart raced slightly, but I held more reserve- Tiertiat and I already faced these things before, and I had not yet known what Davodavidian rage could be.:

[Present Day]

[Week Two]

[7:32 PM]

:It was my fault, my folly. Shadows of the moon fought with the ones I see now, but whether these are the same or are of a different design, that is what I fear. Imagine the pain! They wouldn't stop with "experiments..." I could swallow my beating heart, with my lungs ripped from my chest, tied around my neck as a noose. And that would be their warm up! But UFOrlando is near. It is in this extraterrestrialist mecca that my Prague will be found. A-and why am I sticking around talking to you?!:

"It's one of Sonic's friends."

"Leave 'er be."

A sinkhole buckles the road ahead. Aside from that, nothing impedes this one- a frantic pace forward averts no eyes and instead leads out to some kind of divergence. Citizens around her needlessly smile and falsely act oblivious- why are they so stupid to the miracles in this sky?

:I had nothing like a friend here. If Tiertiat was curtailed from an answer, however, there might be another conduit, someone else of a similar caliber somewhere to be found. Friends were commodities. Less than that, I'd call them tools. The only way to get back to- to- what am I doing talking to you?:


	9. Welcome To Heaven's Hell

**[PART TWO]**

"**BLOODY MAGIKA"**

* * *

:: ::It was cloudy and windy the whole day through. Overcast, with gales consistent, and an unseasonable chill. And at this hour, the day's taken on an indigo hue. But I was only paying attention to the present for scant time.

It was a terrible world we left behind. No one else bothered to care, and what nonsense we had to put up with from there on only served to stupefy our efforts. By luck and by chance, we made it to UFOrlando. Quick trips were a fashion we had learned to wear. Descents, madness, were all of what I stayed to pay. Perhaps, you know, Charon was some kind of mystic U.O.E.O. In this, I made perfect pacts with the king below. Years ago, you know, these were my faults of present day instinct.::

**[Welcome's To Heaven's Hell]**

**(Or, Perhaps It's Hell's Heaven)**

Spacedust Hotel. A drab kind of place for the decadent and self-destructing rich, yes, that grandiose thing is this tour's choice.

"What the hell!" All three feet of him swaggers in. "When did fur coats start walking again?" And all of the dokans stand back. Rouge groans.

"Is that who I think it is?"she goes on, tossing her arms up as Sonic steps up for a handshake.

"Crypto! Long time no see." But his hand is pushed away by a contraption nearly twice his size and capable of that much more damage. ::Also known as an Anal Probe, we were threatened with total rectal annihilation if we said the wrong words in the wrong tone at the wrong time. And Rouge stood away like a troubled ex.::

"Don't you forget, I still own seventy percent of your profits. For the sake of the anuses of everyone inside Sega Corporation, your goddamn Generation game had better gone platinum!" Crypto growls.

"Oh, don't worry! It's goin' pretty well."

"Good- because I would have exploded some asses if- oh fuggedabbout it." ::Who is this you may ask? An old video game colleage of ours, the infamous Cryptosporidium 142. Better known as Crypto, is what we would refer to as a "Furon" and is the proprietor of this service establishment.::

Shadow studies the brochures and, face screaming silent rage, rips it in half. "What're the options?"

"Vill it. Vill, or be taken to the chambers for, eh... 'research and development.'"

And this, Rouge does not like. "Vill?! Oh- oh- oh crap! Just givvus a room!" Crypto grisses a victorious resolve.

"Five rooms, twenty third floor, Madame Starfish. Casino's always open if you're lookin' to, if you catch my drift, _flash da cash_," the alien offers with his own damned smugness.

"Like we got cash _to _flash. Just enough for a room." Sonic picks up his crutches and continues with a stern flatness, "Anything not too expensive?"

"How's eight-fifty sound?"

"High, but we're only staying two nights, so good enough." ::It's too sad looking back at this. How premonition would have benefited us there and then... Yet we lived on through the chaos. We should have known this wasn't going to end well when Crypto did not calculate a single expense. Or maybe that's his method of doing his business when he's sober.::

"A thousand green-backs with eight-fifty percent interest it is. Ehh, how do rings translate into bucks?" ::Again, why did we not question why he didn't know basic currency when he's sober...::

"I... don't know. Actually, we _just_ converted to pesos, and it was to a some guy selling what he claimed was vanilla ice cream who drove off with most of it, so..." ::The limited cash exchanged hands and we had our rooms. We stopped along the way only for vendor snacks.::

* * *

_Ding. _"Floor... twenty-three? OK." ::The ascent was smooth, but '80s yuppie alternative new-romantic synth-pop assaulted our ears. Conversation was the only way to stay sane.:: "You think Blaze is here?"

"I kinda hope so. It would be- heh. Rouge, you don't like Crypto huh?"

"No." ::The history between them is stronger on her face, in the vertical slant of her brow.:: "Hmph." She folds her arms, but the others chuckle. Not Sonic, who's history of being fondled by humans has given him some perspective on how humanoids can behave in the kinks. ::I don't know what happened and I don't want to know.::

"That's what you get for falling for a little, grey Furon." ::This anger I sense, unless this is embarrassment, only deepens the wrinkles.::

"I always thought he was blue."

"Blue rules."

"Shut up, Sonic."

Sonic throws all his friends a smirk and a thumbs up, even if they didn't care for it. "Not my fault some are inclined towards the dumber colors of the spectrum." ::So it goes.:: Shadow grabs Sonic's snout and pushes him to the wall.

"Shut. Up." He lets go. "When will this summer end..." he whispers under his breath. ::I felt for him, but I didn't care for his abuse to Sonic.::

"Ah, here we are. Rooms 2301 to 2305."

"Alright- hey!"

"What?!" Several rush to Sonic's side.

"There's someone in my room!"

"Is that... Blaze?"

"Is she alive? Or is she knocked out?" ::It was true. On that bed was our compact, straight friend, taking up as little space as a sleeping person can.::

"Speak of the devil, but the devil can't explain why she's in my bed." A ring at the phone. The first ring, all ignore it, but when it rings again, it is Amy who musters the nerves to answer.

::I would have answered the phone, yeah. But it is common sense that you never talk to a stranger- and what's stranger than a phone ringing in a room you just entered? Nothing! I recall there was nothing on the line.::

"Who was it?"

"Just heavy breathing."

"Colonel Doof again?"

"Prolly. But actually, it didn't sound like him, Mr. Duffy. It was kind of girly this time." Ring. "Hey, same numbe-" _SMASH. _A throw to the wall ends the phone.

"Shadow! What was that for? That's gonna cost us, man!" _**Gunshot. **_Silver ducked fast enough.

"What was that?!"

Silver answers, "There's a sniper across the street!" He peeks his head up. "But he's gone now." And this ends with three quick raps at the door.

"Hey, who ordered the pizza? Am I in the wrong room?"

"No, I did, but dude, you gotta get out of here! Some sniper's tryna take us out!" The nerd's gone, having dropped the box. Knuckles rips it open at the seams.

"Knuckles, forget the freaking pizza! Someone's trying to _kill _us!"

"Knuckles needs food! Knuckles needs fuckle food! H-hey, what the... This pizza's shaped like an octagon."

::Is it irrelevant that the toasted aroma instantly hit my stomach? This didn't help what would come::

"Who cares! That sniper's probably in this hotel! Let's go, **now.**" Shoving begins, and organized chaos follows as they shuffle out.

"Hey... wait, I just rem- I have relatives here! We can stay at their place!"

"Wow, Tails. Nice telling us _after we get shot at._" ::It slipped my mind. I wholeheartedly admit it did. How quickly we ran, ignoring Crypto who was trying to get us to pay or die. I don't know. But there is only one terrible thing I still regret from our rush.::

"Where's the RV?! Did they take the Globelander?"

"No, it's over there." Quick in her step, Amy runs to the side of the Globelander. ::Paranoid Amy checked the tires and nearly lost her feet jumping into Charon.::

"Ow! Shadow! I wasn't all the way in!"

"Move faster!" ::We revved so loud, my ear drums were slushed as soft as snow, but then there came a saturnine rican show on wheels- it was a freakly assault on human eyes. I sighed and cried...::

"Blaze! Oh no, she is going to die!"

* * *

::Tick-tick, tick-tick, tick-tick, tick-tick, tick-tick repetitiously, with the echo. Amplied it was in the cabin.:: There's a ticking, and in the cabin, Shadow suffers a louder variant.

Shadow growls, ears close to bleeding, as he grumbles a mutter, "Why is it amplified in _here_?" And in here- and in here alone- there is a ring to the taps, not an echo!

"I think we've been bugged."

"Something's ticking in 5/4." ::And how it was so mindmeltingly stupid! But we were not finished with the hand of fate, and this hand had out faces in its path.

"What's up these cards?" Silver swats the cards off of his bed. Amy recognized them. ::It took half a glance before Amy's eyes widened.::

"These... These are tarot cards!" ::I don't know, but Amy explained the symbols. As to what they said, I was a first grader in front of a calculus infested math book.

"But what does it mean?" At machine gun speed... tap-tap- TAP-TAP-TAP..

And we hear, "AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!" from the cabin.


	10. Like Blackened Sunshine

: I didn't wake myself up. With sunshine like water, a jolst nearly killed me. The first ray were strong, but they could not last long. Since the splash, I therefore made a marketed attempt at a fresh opening of senses. Yet I could not help but assume I had been visited.: Blaze stands and throws a stare outside.

**Like Blackened Sunshine**

**(Or, Perhaps When Ultraterrestrials Hunt Germs)**

: Two men in black pulled down their sunglasses and a warping warble- or was that a psychic event- rang in my ears. They were enjoying it.: They do appear to be enjoying this, mentally raping Blaze from beyond the window. :Who are they?: They go for the casino back door. :Where are they going?: They stop not even shutting they door as they disappear inside. :Are they coming for me? I added these questions after the fact. In fact, all I remember happening next was busting my lip on the door seal before stumbling out. Where do I go? Almost without conscious, I leapt into the next room.:

"Hey there. Can we, heeheehee, help you?" The smile this man has...

"We're honeymoonin'." The smile this woman has... Nightmares from both!

"This is the, heeheehee, 'rising action' of our honeymoon." :A literary regular such as myself would not have batted an eye before shuddering.: A contorted face Blaze earns. This moment doesn't last, as Blaze bolts through the suit. The lovers perhaps too giddy to care. An echoing slam, and it's from outside. Not next door- no this is too close. And they're running! How could mere footsteps carry such power through- BAM! Screams, and then bionic whistling. The stomps continue, until Blaze throws herself out the door. The ceramic stings her head as it blows out, but she does flinch, and keeps speed. One leap around the door does nothing to thwart the aggressors. She rushes through the dust of the couple. By sheer chance it may be, but the elevator opens.

: Before I stumbled into the elevator, and don't ask me why, but I stopped. Stairs were my only option.: In fact, she skids to her side and pushes herself over the rails. Let fate be cruel, the floor ends prematurely. :: I was still, if I had to estimate, sixteen floors over base. But they were for me at an astonishing speed. 'Do I stay and fight?' Yes, that will be- No! Damn fool, these are Davodavidians. _They _trained the Voxai. Mind control? They'll shut off my neurons. They could, those weeks ago and weeks ahead, reach across time, and kill me now. And 5/4... 5/4... in my mind, I heard something clicking in the 5/4 rhythm. How I focused on.. On this in the chaos of the moment. I only attribute to them. : At no point does she cease, and Blaze crosses the second floor hallway. This is a passive chase for the ages! Like ghosts, the followers have disappeared. Blaze graces the boiler room with presence, but stumbles back to a wall and sits.

:The best thing to do with these freaks would be to play with their infinite heads. Dying would do no good- when they willed it, they would pop me back to life and kill me again, endlessly.

[MEPHISTAN]

[WEEK THREE]

So it spans the human mind, yet escapes its reality and there is the game they play when they seek sinless rage; ultraterrestrials we call them, and this call fits them as they speak in ten billion tongues why this world has gone mad. Gone, they are gone. But alive, they are more.

:: Who cares if the house sits in front of a desert? If anything, let them feel the individuality of this setting. Sad to show apprehension after so so much apprehension, and yet we have no more since Taco Paco. Death had trailed us all and it was there, then, and it lived in the air, so why resist its murderous grip now? Feeling beyond Death was a hand of war, passive war if anything and it pointed towards the city. Whether they saw it is something I may never know, but I translated this to what it was. I would sever this hand. What else was there for an insect in an ocean of pesticide except swim?:: With sunshine dying and the night's deep indigos ready to execute the sun-backed crimsons on the clouds, the air remains as if noon- heavy and damp. The furs of the byodokans are flied and dragged, puffed and rankly.

"This humidity's killing my hair! Can we please kill this stupid suspense already?" Oh the suspense! And yet they rather to stand. And yet they rather to complain. ::We knocked twice more, and Knuckles pressed his nonexistent ears against the door, followed by Amy and followed more by Shadow's fist. Then, and against our minds and nerves, Aunt and Uncle Prune, eased up the driveway. Drunk as Chaos knows what?::

"Where's your Durango 95?" ::As they owned one. Own**ed**.:: Tails's face is almost blank, and he pulls at his fur. "Mom gave you a lot of rings for that. She practically threw-"

"Well we threw away the blakes!" ::No one understood what Uncle said.

"Guys, heads up. I'm gonna het. Just learned Cousin Johnic is in the city." :: I've never met Johnic, but from thes tories Sonic told me, he sounds like a loser. Sonic doesn't see it this way. Never has, and I've feared he'd someday fall out with Johnic as soon as their personalities clashed- providing Johnic is actually real.

"Soniiic..." ::The second Sonic mentioned his abrupt leave, I knew Amy would whine. I'd be concerned if others didn't expect this.:: "Why'd you hafta go?"

"It's Johnic, Amy!" ::Worth a shot.:: Amy's face sags with her body. ::No amount of explaining would kill her nagging. Even an attempt at a parting hug didn't- wouldn't ever- coerce Sonic to change his mind. Sad in fact if it had not been that he's been stressing himself to find a reason to get away from her. But it's for Johnic... Or perhaps he knew something we didn't and decided to ditch us before everything went hellbound...::


End file.
